People first: Earl Barr (UCL)
“AI for Software Construction” is the most popular Case of using Artificial Intelligence for Software Engineering.
We prepared the interview with Earl Barr, Senior Lecturer at University College London, an expert in this Subject Matter, to share a bit about his technical background, personal motivation and profession vision.
What is the most complex technical task you have ever solved?
Hard question: all tasks/problems seem simple in retrospect. Let me give two answers. With two other developers, I built the symbolic execution for x86 binaries that is part of the ROSE compiler. When I worked on wall street, I rearchitected an electronic market for bonds to reduce its trade latency one order of magnitude.
What does motivate you in work?
Working on hard problems with smart people.
Software Engineer of the future — what is he like?
The software engineer of the future will generally work at a higher level of abstraction using AI-enhanced tooling that visualises executions and allows her to use natural language more than she can today.
What will you be talking about at the Conference?
Software is bimodal; it combines a formal algorithmic channel and a natural language channel of identifiers and comments. Bimodal software engineering exploits constraints across both channels. I will present the first bimodal tool, RefiNym, that learns conceptual types from names and refines program.
If “Software Engineering” was a bicycle, what part would “AI for SE” then be?
The gear cassettes, because they increase the efficiency of human effort.
Earl will share in details his achievements in applying AI to Software Construction at the AIFORSE Conference 2017.
